AMD achieved its highest ever share of the global CPU market in the last quarter of 2021, figures show. The US chip maker was responsible for 25.6% of all shipments between October and December, beating its previous high of 25.3% from 2006.
That’s according to data from Mercury Research, which suggests the growth was driven by strong sales of x86 chips. You’ll find these in consoles such as the Xbox Series X, which may have prioritised due to ongoing chip shortages. That may explain the slight fall in desktop and mobile market share – AMD previously admitted it has had to divert resources away from more affordable CPUs.
AMD’s market share should be bolstered by the arrival of Ryzen 6000 Series mobile CPUs, which the company revealed at CES 2022. These are expected to make their way into laptops over the next few months, but we’ll be waiting until the Ryzen 7000 Series for new desktop chips.
Of course, AMD’s slice of the CPU pie remains much lower than Intel, its main rival when it comes to processors. Given Intel also released new laptop CPUs at CES, it could be difficult for AMD to make many major inroads in 2022.
Still, it’s a remarkable rise for a company that only began making Ryzen CPUs in 2017. It also coincides with record revenue for AMD in Q4 of 2021. The company made $4.8 billion between October and December last year, a 49% year-on-year increase.
Despite a big launch at the start of the year, it looks like AMD still has big plans for the rest of 2022. The chip maker has confirmed that the Ryzen 7000 Series will launch at some point in the second half of year, using its new Zen 4 architecture.